Gap In The Air, Edinburg 2014-15

Gap in the air: a festival of sonic art

15 November 2014 – 14 February 2015 at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh

Gap in the air is a celebration of experimental music and sonic art at the University of Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice Gallery, including performances by experimental musicians and artists, work by staff and students, workshops and academic discussions. The programme is dedicated to the experience of sound, the neo-classical space of the Georgian Gallery becoming a sounding-box for the most prescient themes in contemporary sonic art. gap in the air will provide an accessible overview of this expanding field whilst also being a live testing ground for new and innovative ideas.

The season of events spans four thematic sections. And more detailed information about each section will become available in: place, reach, orientation and nature.

Reach explores sound as a connector across distance. Selected from an open call to international artists reach is an endless playlist of 3D sonic art from around the world, reflecting the vast range of contemporary sonic arts practice, played through a specifically installed 16 channel ambisonic (3D) sound system.

The reach playlist is up featuring sounds and music from around the world. Special thanks to all contributions, it sounds fantastic in there and the range of work is incredibly rich. Below is a listing of the main contributors with links to details of each submission:

Screen Shot 2014-12-04 at 12.39.33Joseph Anderson, a specialist in ambisonic software development and composer based at DXARTS at the University of Washington sent in a vast list of old and new electroacoustic pieces in b-format. Full details of the pieces submitted are here: digital.eca.ed.ac.uk/gap-in-air/2014/12/04/reach-playlist-dxarts/

Edinburgh-based sound recordist and sound designer Kevin Hay sent in two lovely sound walks taken from his recent visit to Africa.

American sound artist Angeline Girard sent us two radio interference tracks … “Part of a project investigating the signal-to-noise ratio in radio and users’ interactions with the medium, this ‘instrumental’ piece was made using close miking techniques to capture electromagnetic noise and emergent signals from a variety of radios and frequency bands. Very little processing was used in composition and mixing of the track, as it’s meant to expose a volatile ambience that’s inaudible without the radio interface, but ever-present.”

Composer Michael Edwards sent in his powerful four-channel work anonymous obvious (aka several instrumental structures to annoy ludi) (2000), Michael said of piece “it was based around a prototype of an instrumental composition algorithm (called slippery chicken). Using instrumental samples, the algorithm generated short musical structures (and will generate longer ones); complete little pieces even, that are surprisingly convincing and somehow musically logical. They are, however, also rather anonymous, that is, to me they sound like a generic form of contemporary classical music that lack my own musical characteristics. Hence the “anonymous” part of the title. Hence the algorithm is still under development.” Further details are available here: www.sumtone.com/prog-note.php?workid=1.

Michael also gave us access to John Chowning’s classic work of computer music Turenas (1972), a now legendary work of electronic composition, especially notable for its four-channel spatialisation techniques. You can read more about this piece in an interview between Chowning and Bijan Zelli given in 1998: cec.sonus.ca/econtact/12_2/ChowningJo_Zelli.html

We’ve also included a couple of recordings from other parts of gap in the air. We’re most grateful to Edimpro and Michel Doneda for allowing us to take extracts from their performance at Talbot Rice on the 27th November 2014.

Marcin Pietruszewski, who is giving a supercollider workshop on the 8th December 2014 gave us two tracks